Budget debate is a waste, just like a lot of government spending.

The air is crisp. The kids are back in school. Football is on the tube. And the fools in Washington are threatening to shut down the government because they can't agree on a budget.

So I guess it's time to show, again, just how easily Uncle Sam could keep a few pennies in his pocket if he'd just give a damn.

In audits released in recent months, I unearthed plenty of examples of wasteful spending, poor leadership, lax accounting and disregard for the rules.

Consider this doozy released Wednesday about how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives managed the finances of its undercover investigations into illegal tobacco sales.

After reading it you'll need a smoke, because it says auditors were unable to verify what happened to 2.1 million cartons of cigarettes purchased for undercover investigations. Retail value: $127 million.

That prompted the ATF to investigate its investigations and refute the Department of Justice inspector general's findings. The agency said it found "unexplained deposits" that it "assumed" were from sales of some of the unaccounted-for smokes, and that only 447,218 cartons couldn't be reconciled due to insufficient documentation.

That's still a lot of smokes.

The audit also criticized the ATF for allowing a confidential informant to keep more than $4.9 million of the $5.2 million profit made from selling tobacco to criminal targets.

Who says crime doesn't pay?

The agency told the inspector general the informant was allowed to keep the money to cover his business expenses. But the agency failed to verify those expenses, said auditors, who found the money covered not only the informant's entire business operating overhead but left him with $2.3 million in profit.

"We found a serious lack of oversight by ATF at both the headquarters and field office levels," the audit says.

If the government is looking for more money, maybe it should just check its existing accounts to see how much dough is sitting there collecting dust.

The Department of State had a combined $82 million in 955 expired grant accounts that could have been used for other purposes, according to an inspector general's report in June.

Auditors criticized the performance of grant managers and other financial officials, saying they "did not always fully execute their responsibilities" by maintaining adequate records.

"Documents required for grant closeout were often missing, incomplete or inaccurate," the audit said.

Leaving the money sitting there even cost the government in some cases.

The inspector general said three bureaus within the department wasted $79,000 in administrative fees in fiscal year 2011 by failing to close and delete accounts for expired grants and grants with no balances.

The government even is blowing money by, of all things, paying taxes.

Employees using Commerce Department credit cards paid nearly $300,000 in state and local sales taxes in fiscal year 2011, which the federal government is exempt from paying, according to an audit in May.

Some employees recovered the taxes they had mistakenly paid, but others did not even know they'd paid taxes, or didn't bother trying to recoup them even though they knew the drill, the inspector general found.

Why would they? It's not their money, right?

The current spending standoff that threatens to shut down the federal government this week is centered on whether to kill Obamacare by withholding funding. So while we're talking about Obamacare, an audit released Sept. 18 criticized the IRS for not accurately and completely accounting for its costs to implement the Affordable Care Act.

The IRS failed to count an estimated $67 million in "indirect costs" such as office rent and technology support when tabulating its expenses, according to the report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

The inspector general said that resulted in the agency providing an incomplete picture of just how much implementing the initiative could cost.

Auditors also found the IRS' direct labor costs to implement Obamacare "were sometimes inaccurate and not always substantiated by reliable supporting documentation." Payroll records were not kept for some employees, which did not allow auditors to reconcile the hours they worked on the program.

The inspector general questioned why travel costs for 38 employees were charged to accounts related to Obamacare, but none of their wages or benefits were included despite the fact they worked at least 1,441 hours implementing the health reform plan.

The IRS agreed to the inspector general's recommendations to improve its accounting practices, according to the audit.

See how easy it is to find ways the government could save money? While some of the findings in these audits, and in others, were disputed, there still is ample evidence that money could be saved if government officials would just treat public dollars with the same care as they do their own dollars.

But you and I know that never will happen because the federal government is just one big, fat, inefficient machine. It's a gas guzzler, and the bureaucrats and politicians behind the wheel keeping filling the tank with your tax dollars. When the tank is empty, they ask us for more so they can fill it up again.

The Watchdog is published Thursdays and Sundays. Contact me at watchdog@mcall.com, 610-841-2364 or The Morning Call, 101 N. Sixth St., Allentown, PA, 18101. I'm on Twitter @mcwatchdog and Facebook at Morning Call Watchdog.